If you were rebooting the X-line.

[Jackraow21]

I’d have never brought OML to the 616 after Secret Wars. Hear me out...

- Instead, I’d have gone ahead and broken OG Logan out of his adamantium tomb through some sort of Secret Wars cosmic tomfoolery where OML was somehow able to touch his consciousness and revive him as the world faded to white again and was rebuilt.

- So our Logan is alive, but his healing factor isn’t working like it used to. So he’s looking older, a little grayer (but not 9000 years old like some artists drew OML). His memories are a mess. He remembers OML’s future, so his new solo book by Lemire and Sorrentino (simply called “Logan”) starts in almost exactly the same way as Old Man Logan #1 did, with him trying to prevent that future and being super mixed up about which reality he’s in.

- From there, things transpire much the same way, with Logan rejoining the X-men but no longer going by Wolverine. Laura still takes up the mantle to honor his legacy at first, but once she finds him alive he tells her to keep it. That he’s getting old and no longer the best there is and she’s the Wolverine now. That’s the status quo, for awhile.

- Then we get to Return of Wolverine, which is not this meaningless story about Wolverine coming back to life (since it feels like he never left anyway with OML having been running around in his place), but rather it’s this big sprawling epic which involves Soteira and Persephone and their experiments and sinister agenda (whatever that is); and it drags in just about everyone you can imagine who was ever connected with Weapon X in any meaningful way (Creed, Wade, Deathstrike, Fantomex, Laura).

- Return of Wolverine then becomes about how Logan got his groove back and became “The Wolverine” again, in spirit as much as anything. His mind gets “purged” along the way of many of the memories he’s been carrying around with him, some from other realities or timelines (i.e., we find that his mind is a mess because on top of a century’s worth of his own memories he has memories from the DoFP future, from the House of M reality and the OML reality, etc.). Soteira basically “breaks” his mind at some point in this deal — and we get an epic berserker rage scene when they do this — and Logan comes out the other side with all those memories having been lost as a result.

- So... by the end of this mini we’ve got Logan back in the cowl as Wolverine, and back to basics. His healing factor isn’t as fast as it used to be, so it’s more like it was in the 80s anyway. Where he could not shrug off mortal wounds in seconds, but rather hours or even days to fully recover. So he has to rely more on his skills and “being the best there is at what he does.” His memories have been wiped again, not to the point where he doesn’t remember anything at all, but he cannot recall anything before the Weapon X project. There are still flashes of things, but he doesn’t know if they’re real or memory implants or just “fever dreams” of other timelines. Again, this is a reset to the character as he was before House of M. Before Origin even. Sure, the readers know the story from Origin now, but Logan does not. And he never really told anyone much about it when he got his memories back after House of M, so it doesn’t get referenced anymore.

[PsionicHero]

Okay okay okay. This is just going to be wild, but what I did was list the first 30ish X-Men that came to mind, and put them in a randomizer. Then I broke the teams out in order, and made the teams in order of relevant appearance: Again, this shake up was completely random and wild. Could you imagine a reboot with these lineups??!

FIRST CLASS: This one came out really unique and with 4 recognizable X-Men and Sunfire. Iceman and Sunfire would for sure have a rival relationship.
Iceman
Rogue
Bishop
Wolverine
Sunfire

GIANT SIZED: Holy balanced team Batman!
Jubilee
Karma
M
Northstar
Polaris
Havok
Beast

NEW MUTANTS: Jean and Emma on the same team as teenagers!? Sign me up! Ric and Shatterstar landed on the same team again? Lots of Teen drama potential here.
Shatterstar
Banshee
Mirage
Emma Frost
Rictor
Marvel Girl
Wolfsbane
Gambit

X-FACTOR: Shadowcat and Magik could get the Rictor/Shatterstar treatment of built up angst that finally leads up to them becoming a couple.
Colossus
Cyclops
Thunderbird
Angel
Shadowcat
Magma
Magik

NEW X-MEN: Love this team as well.
Storm
Psylocke
Cannonball
Sunspot
Nightcrawler
Chamber

Randomizers can be lots of fun! Haha

[CRaymond]

Is this a thread about rebooting X history, ground up worldvuilding, or a thread about where what and why I’d reassign characters and books starting from a “now” point?

[Captain Nash]

Is this a thread about rebooting X history, ground up worldvuilding, or a thread about where what and why I’d reassign characters and books starting from a “now” point?

More about ground up worldbuilding for a particular character. I think many times people see threads about rebooting/reshuffling the X-line and go ahead and give their ideas on team formations. Not that their ideas are bad but sometimes it isn't actually the premise of the thread.

[PsionicHero]

If you were rebooting the time line for a NuXmen line and to deage the characters you had to take away a period of time from them whether seen or unseen. What would you take away from your fave's history and why?

I can start as an example.

Storm had several huge chunks of time in her life.
Thief, Goddess, X-man, Powerless.

For me this is a hard one but i would go with taking away her powerless period because she lived as a thief before her powers fully manifested. I think that would take a huge chunk of time off the character as well without totally changing her fundamental character.

Is this a thread about rebooting X history, ground up worldvuilding, or a thread about where what and why I’d reassign characters and books starting from a “now” point?

More about ground up worldbuilding for a particular character. I think many times people see threads about rebooting/reshuffling the X-line and go ahead and give their ideas on team formations. Not that their ideas are bad but sometimes it isn't actually the premise of the thread.

I did both. I have two replies in this thread. So I addressed what I would change about Psylocke, and then because I kept thinking about rebooting the franchise as a whole, I posted what I posted just 2 posts above.

Basically I answered the original poster's question, and then did a team shuffle up as if the world was being rebooted completely.

[Tazirai]

More about ground up worldbuilding for a particular character. I think many times people see threads about rebooting/reshuffling the X-line and go ahead and give their ideas on team formations. Not that their ideas are bad but sometimes it isn't actually the premise of the thread.

I've noticed that in this thread already lol. It's not about the makeup of teams. Rather than the premise of particular characters and members of the teams.

[Rover]

If I could reboot the X-line...I would make it so the O5 never traveled to the present.

I would change some stuff for Cyclops too and go back to a point around Avengers vs X-Men and take a completely different direction with character development for him.

Maybe some stuff with Wolverine..not so much erase part of his story, but make it so he doesn't have amnesia anymore. He has centuries worth of memories and experiences and I think him having access to all of this would make him super interesting. He could be the wisest of all the X-Men but still have the same personality.

And I want a weird Deadpool issue where he breaks the fourth wall and forces the different people who have been involved with his character over the past few years to reboot everything because it's been so bad.

[Ambaryerno]

For an individual character thing, I would have X-23 join a JGS-based book after Avengers Arena. It NEVER made sense for her to turn up in All-New X-Men, and created a plot hole that has still never been filled.

Instead Logan would bring her back to the school for her recovery, where she would reconnect with the New X-Men, particularly reestablishing her friendships with Dust and Mercury, confront her rocky history with Surge, and deal with what happened between her and Hellion (both of them admitting they made mistakes in how they handled things). Most importantly, we would actually get to SEE her establish a father/daughter relationship with Logan in order to properly set up her reaction to his death, and her decision to become Wolverine. Speaking of which, Laura wouldn't just turn up wearing the cowl after the timeskip. There would be an actual sequence of events leading to her making that choice, and she would pick up the cowl for the first time ON-PANEL. I'd take her "I want them to see the Wolverine coming" from ANW, and have that be the very first moment where she wears the cowl. I would still give her the solo book, but this reveal would happen in the Flagship series, perhaps in a story that loosely homages Logan's famed assault on the Hellfire Club.

[Sin Nick]

I'd just erase everything that happened in the past 18 years and slowly integrate X-23 somehow. I'd use her original origin and appearance though, none of that child prostitute stuff.

[CRaymond]

More about ground up worldbuilding for a particular character. I think many times people see threads about rebooting/reshuffling the X-line and go ahead and give their ideas on team formations. Not that their ideas are bad but sometimes it isn't actually the premise of the thread.

Charles Xavier
1945-2012
I realize how much Marvel slides its timescale, but I really think of Charles Xavier as a product of the twentieth century, and the further we get from that time, the more I prefer him to be the uneven shoulders the X-Men stand on, rather than their immortal idealogue. I also see him in a very dimming light, something between Millar's duplicitous Ultimate version, and Morrison's blind optimist interpretation. Like if Jenny Sparks was a telepath with male privileges, Charles Xavier would've had both good and bad hands in shaping the world the X-Men find themselves.

1950-1965
Charles, Eric Lensherr, Irene Adler, and Carter Ryking would've been secretly raised at a postwar base in the American southwest. All four would've been trained as special operatives for western interests, specifically against the splintered Hand organization, HYDRA and Russian science ministry. They'd be led in field missions by the mysteriously ageless Colonel James Howlett. While science was implemented to aid and augment their abilities, it was also secretly obtained to counteract them.

1965-1975
The team grows to include a German soldier named David Nord, and a mysterious femme fatale who takes the name Raven Darkholme. During his time as a government agent, Charles meets and marries a brilliant biochemist named Moira MacTaggert. They conceive a child just as the team responds to the crash landing of an alien spacecraft. Not matching records of previously known alien vessels, the team discovers it is a Shi'Ar imperial cruiser, infested with Brood. Ryking is seemingly killed by the Brood. Charles falls for the telepathic princess of the Shi'Ar, and decides to leave Earth to see the cosmos.

1975-1985
Charles returns to Earth in time to discover Moira gave birth to a boy named David. His young son exhibits signs of psychic mutations that the Shi'Ar had warned him about. The Shi'Ar also have psychic mutants, but once in a while a psi will grow too fast too quickly, and rend reality. Charles decides to lobotomize his son, much to the horror of Eric and Moira. The team is in shambles when they are attacked by Belasco, an interdimensional sorceror hunting the source of the reality disturbances. They repel Belasco, but not before Raven decides to join him in his realm.

1985-1995 THE DARK AGE
Using technology obtained from their childhood, Charles and Eric are captured by government agents and forced to assist in the creation of Weapon Plus operatives. Their old leader Colonel Howlett is experimented on using their mutant gifts to psychically brainwash and electromagnetically reinforce his body. Eric and Charles manage to escape, killing everyone in the Weapon Plus base. Eric learns of a secret orbital space station created to house Weapon Plus and decides to investigate. Charles decides to start a school.

1995-2005 ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT
Charles opens the Xavier Institute. Of his original petition, only Henry McCoy accepts enrollment. Sean Cassidy, Amelia Voght, Armando Munoz and James Proudstar decline. Emma Frost declines enrollment in favor of training her abilities in England with Lady Elizabeth Braddock. Later, he enrolls Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Ororo, and Kurt Szardos. This team of new mutants discovers the mysterious "Logan" in the Canadian wilderness. They battle their Russian counterparts: Omega, Beta, and Iota Red, and manages to recruit Beta to join them as their "Colossus". The Brood return, with a Queen and Brood warriors all with Ryking's powers. They also meet Eric, now Magneto, returned from orbit with a team of mutants of his own.

2005-2015
Charles grows anxious as Jean's psychic talents leapfrog his own when she resurrects herself after a mission gone awry. Instead of lobotomizing her like David, he inserts mental blocks that inhibit her telepathy and telekinetic potential. Sensing this, Jean leaves Xavier's and is manipulated by Emma Frost's Hellfire Club into uncovering her true potential. Magneto exacerbates the situation by telling her she is a goddess. Jean loses control of her powers and detonates Boston. Knowing he cannot capture her alone, Xavier enlists Lady Elizabeth Braddock and the Hand assassin Kwannon to shut her down. Kwannon's mind and Betsy's bodies are destroyed, but Besty's mind INSIDE Kwannon's body cuts Jean at the Crown Chakra, and Charles manages to reset Jean to her former self at the cost of his own life. Seeing the destruction her mutation and inexperience wrought, Jean kills herself. The Phoenix, Jean's psychic power and cancerous emotional energy, lives on in the astral plane infecting psi-potentials across the universe.

2015-present
Scott leaves the X-Men. Upon finding Irene Adler's journals documenting the future, Ororo and Kurt decide to re-open the school in seclusion of Australia's outback. Henry McCoy, Emma Frost, and Colossus are hired as teachers. Wolverine and Psylocke serve as recruiters and covert operatives.

Stories:

1. The Shi'Ar hate the X-Men for creating the Phoenix entity from naturally occurring psi potentials... but value their ability to repel Brood infestions. There are Brood Queens with the powers of Carter Ryking and John Proudstar. The Queens born from Havok and Banshee were killed.
2. Mojoverse is actually a Chinese supercity where modified mutants compete in gladiatorial competitions on closed-circuit television. Longshot and Shatterstar are merged into the same person with debilitating "blinking" teleportation powers. He's Asian.
3. Genosha is an Indian Ocean penal colony for South Asian, African and Middle Eastern mutants, run by an oppressive slaving government using mutant suppression technologies stolen from Weapon Plus. They are never toppled by Magneto. Neal Shaara, Agni, leads the resistance.
3. DoFP is all documented in Destiny's journals. Bishop, Cable, Nimrod, Rachel, and Ahab are all DoFP timetravellers. Rachel is the only undocumented entity. Cable is not a Summers, but a future iteration of a Weapon Plus soldier, bred from a combination of Xavier, Lensherr, and Howlett genes.
4. Belasco, Azazel, and Lucifer are the same character, merged in the reboot into a evil, immortal Doctor strange sorceror, banished to a hell dimension. Raven escaped from his clutches while pregnant, and years later he returned to claim the baby. Instead, he mistakenly claimed Iota Red. Iota Red returns from Limbo as Belsaco's general, defeats him in the Inferno event, joins the X-Men as Magik.
5. X-23 is the ONLY clone in the X-Universe.
6. Mystique has Rogue steal Carol Danvers' powers specifically so Rogue can fly them to Magneto's Weapon Plus orbiting space station, and steal all the research and materials there.
7. The Acolytes believe Magneto is still alive, despite several accounts that he died in the Phoenix event. They are the primary rival to mutant recruitment to the X-Men.

[Sandmans_Raven]

NEW MUTANTS: Jean and Emma on the same team as teenagers!? Sign me up! Ric and Shatterstar landed on the same team again? Lots of Teen drama potential here.
Shatterstar
Banshee
Mirage
Emma Frost
Rictor
Marvel Girl
Wolfsbane
Gambit

I like this. So, would the characters in this line up all be kids or would a couple of them be older?

[Mia]

Wow this is so...difficult. But for me here are changes that I'd make:

Emma No relationship with Cyclops. I'd have her running her own business, financing X-Men and having a hand in managing the team.
Banshee Not killed off.
Iceman Leave him as he was. Honest, kind and a ladies man. Not a dishonest user of people.
X-23 Completely re-do her time as ANW. Let her take on Logan's identity (because it let's her do her job easier). She should go on spy assignments while trying to figure out what she wants to do with her. Stories seeing her come more into herself and evolve as a person. No Gabby and so we can get rid of the teen mom motif she's been reduced to.
Gambit He should be like who he evidently modeled on. Casanova. He should be a thief and inventor and a seducer of women. Not Rogue's dog on a leash.

[Anduinel]

Honestly, I've been pretty OK with Northstar's overall trajectory since joining the X-Men - goodness knows he's better off than he was in Alpha Flight (and I say that as an AF fan!). I'd have had him more active as a teacher, toned down some of Austen's OOC nonsense (crying in the middle of a fight? please!), have him actually brought back into the fold for help instead of being abandoned by Wolverine post-EotS, and that Skottie Young story never happened. And, of course, just have him featured on a team more than once in a blue moon. But in the overall big picture, I'm pretty pleased.

[PsionicHero]

I like this. So, would the characters in this line up all be kids or would a couple of them be older?

I didn't really think too hard on it yet. However since I really like these lineups I'll probably use them for my own little AU sometime. I'd probably want to stay somewhere in the 14-19 age range for them.

Shatterstar - 16
Banshee - 14
Mirage - 19
Emma Frost - 17
Rictor - 15
Marvel Girl - 18
Wolfsbane - 16
Gambit - 14

[FUBAR007]

Emma No relationship with Cyclops. I'd have her running her own business, financing X-Men and having a hand in managing the team.

I can't vote this up enough.